M6600 Owners Thread

I am waiting for my new (used) M6600 to be delivered and read some disturbing things about the specific model being 'faulty' - due to it having IPS display and Radeon 8900m which are incompatible (the Radeon being unable to output 10-bit signal required by the IPS) - this specific notebook has had so far 2 warranty replacements of graphics card and one of motherboard...
I'd put it to bad luck since bad things can happen to anyone and I have not had a single replacement so far in using my Vostro 3700... however those ideas about it being faulty somehow make me uneasy...

I'm trying to find some information in this thread (from page 384 where there is information about IPS+8900m being released) but it's not really productive, so I thought it does not hurt to ask

 

The Firepro M8900 and the IPS display should work together fine. The only funny thing is there was a period of time when Dell didn't offer the configuration for sale at first.

 

They did the same thing with the Firepro M6000 on the M6700 (god those two model numbers are too alike for my taste).

 

Ufff... I've just recovered from a mysterious (to me at least) system failure which nearly gave me a heart-attack This is a mission-critical laptop, and I couldn't boot it!

OK, but first things first: I have an SSD minicard as the boot/system drive, plus 2x 750GB HDDs in RAID0 (yes, I know - and yes, I do backup constantly ). Due to the nature of my work, I run out of space on the data drive (the RAID 0 volume). So I purchased yet another, identical 750GB HDD plus a cheap, 'universal' tray on eBay, and hoped for the best planning to replace my optical drive with it...

After I removed the optical drive and tried to fit the HDD+tray the first problem arose: the 'universal' tray is too long and sticks out of the optical bay slot 3-5 mm. It also doesn't have screw holes for the fixing bracket; this can easily be made but what do you guys think about the tray size? It clearly isn't universal enough... When I asked at Dell Poland they said they cannot provide me with the correct size tray, so I went with eBay one basing on comments here that as long as it's 9.5 mm thick it'll be OK. Well - it is 9.5 mm thick and the width is fine, too - but it's just too long to be made flush with the bay opening! What's your advise?

Nevertheless, I left the new drive in the laptop and put the housing together. Upon POST up it did show the new HDD on the Intel Matrix screen, but then - nothing OK I thought to myself - most probably, the new HDD has spoiled the boot device sequence in the BIOS, so I went there to fix it - but it seemed OK (SSD minicard being on top). So to make sure, I de-activated all other devices in the list leaving the SSD minicard as the only possible boot device, but still no joy - still the blank screen after rebooting! I then set the POST behavior to verbose, and of course a message appeared that no bootable/system device was found. Fearing the worst (that I somehow damaged the SSD minicard during the new HDD assembly), I entered BIOS again only to see that the SSD device disappeared from the boot sequence list completely!

I was really panicking when trying to boot again, I hit F12 instead of F2 this time - and what a relief... My SSD minicard was there on the list! Why not in the BIOS?!!!

So right now my M6600 is up and running normally, but of course - having posted this call for help - I'll go to the BIOS again to double-check the boot priority so that I don't have to go through F12 each time I'm booting. But the question remains:

- isn't it possible to have 3 HDDs (plus the SSDminicard) in the M6600? Is the optical bay SATA somehow limited and will not support a HDD?

Please help! TIA

Piotr

PS. When I look at the Intel Storage screen now during POST I *think* it did NOT show the additional (3rd) HDD drive when it was in the system...

 

It should work, a SATA port is a SATA port and the chipset can definitely handle 4 HDDs. You could try getting the M6700's HDD caddy instead of the M6600's, it should give you a better fit and you'll be able to screw it in place.

 

So I thought... Looking at the Advanced options of the 'Internal ATAPI Device' Status, it shows SATA transfer rate 1.5 Gbps - but I think it's due to the optical drive SATA I standard, and NOT the capabilities of the port itself (it should be capable of 3 Gbps - SATA II standard).

So, either my new HDD is defective, or the tray's interface is somehow limiting the connection... The result being BIOS'es bootable device list going south... I have no idea, so any advise on how to methodically test and pin-point the problem would be greatly appreciated.

 

There are some odd bays that have a physical switch to determine compatibility with certain laptops, might wanna check that.

 

The optical bay adapter doesn't sit flush, try push it down while slotting it in. When I first get mine, it go all weird because it is not all the way in. Boot with blank screen is one of them.

If you slot it all the way in, only the faceplate should stick out.

 

That's a good hint, thanks - I'll try again and post the results.

 

MoldCAD,

I'd do the two things mentioned above, try to re-insert making sure that it is guiding in properly and check for jumpers or switches on the device for SATA operation.
There are 3 simple things that can be tried if there is a sudden weird hardware misbehavior 1. Reset BIOS to default then reset any special settings, or 2. Remove all power supplies and hold power button down for >1 minute to discharge the boards, or lastly 3. disconnect the system battery for a few minutes and reconnect - this will also reset the BIOS so any special settings will need to be reset.

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So, I got a new wireless router and doubled my throughput throughout the house, speed matches my LAN line - - zoom-zoom!
Funny, new routers come with WPA2-PSK AES enabled out of the box, hint hint don't use WEP, haha. (Don't even think it has WEP)

Could someone recommend the best way to network computers for file sharing other than the homegroup/public folders sharing, and still maintain strong security within the network?